Try it in Black & White

 

I was going through some photos from my last photo shoot and came across one I really liked. The only problem was that the subject wasn’t really standing out from the background. All the color tones were too similar. What did I do, you may ask, I switched it to black and white!

Granted, I did have to play around with the exposures of different colors quite a bit, along with adjusting levels and using layer masks, but I have to admit I like how it turned out.

So if you’re having trouble figuring out what to do with a photo, try it in black and white. It’s amazing what you can do with the contrasting tones.

I hope you’re all enjoying your Christmas and NYE weekends!

Click Here to See the Full Sized Photo

Rehearsals and Dinners

Well, this past weekend came and went (and what a weekend it was).

My sister got married!

I can’t believe how quickly the wedding came up. I can’t believe how quickly it went by. It was so nice to see all the friends and relatives that came into town for the wedding. Some I hadn’t seen in years.

It makes me want to start traveling again.

Anyway, I’ve gone ahead and edited the photos from my sister, and now, brother-in-law’s wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Click the link below to view.

Gallery: WEDDING REHEARSAL & DINNER

Lights, Camera, Action!

Hi everyone.

This has been such a short week for me. Mainly it’s because I’m preparing to leave for Arizona in a day. Hopefully I’ll still be able to put up a post or two while I’m out there, though.

With that said, I figured you would get more out of me finding some relevant tutorials than you would if I were to write another post about how tired I am.

Thankfully, for both of us, I was able to find a couple of them that illustrate what I’ve been talking about in my recent posts of using off camera flash and action photography pretty well.

How to Shoot Action Photos

Action photography. It doesn’t have to be limited to sports photos. It can be of you and your friends running through a field while goofing off. It can be a photo of a train rolling through a station. It can be a photo of your dog chasing a squirrel or cat playing with a toy.

The funny thing about action photography, and photography in general really, is that it is very unnatural. Life is constantly moving and flowing. Even at rest we still have things going on around us.

Photos for Friday: Soccer in the Fall

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going out to see my sister’s soccer team make it to the semi-finals of their league’s playoffs. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it to the championship game, but they did put up quite a fight.

The game was so close that they had to go to a shoot out to determine the winner.

Click the link below to view the photos from the game.

 

Gallery: SOCCER IN THE FALL

Keep At It

Some times life can get crazy. Unfortunately, that craziness can also wear us down and keep us from doing what we really want to do.

The problem with getting worn down isn’t always that it physically keeps us from doing what we like to do, but rather that it can take your passion and make it feel like a chore.

Photos for Friday: Revisiting the Past

Every once in a while it’s always good to look back on what we’ve done. That’s definitely a lot easier to do when you have lots and lots of photos.

When trying to figure out what I was going to for this week’s installment of “Photos for Friday” I wasn’t sure what I was going to be able to come up with. Although, that’s mainly because I didn’t have any time to take new photos this week.

Lucky for you I’ve been meaning to go through the photos from my trip to Tokyo a few years ago.

Two things struck me as I was reviewing the photos: I can’t believe I went to Tokyo and I can’t believe how bad of a photographer I was back then compared to now.

It amazes me how many photos I had to throw out just to get a decent batch for this first album. Thankfully, though, I took a ton of them over the two weeks that I was there.

Click on the link below to view the gallery from the first few days of the trip. I’ll be sure to post more from the trip when I can.

Gallery: TOKYO, WHAT SEEMS LIKE FOREVER AGO

Photos for Friday: A Rainy Evening

Well, Topical Storm (or is it just a depression now?) Ida is doing its best to ruin everyone’s fun these past couple of days. So I figured it would be a good occasion to dig through some photos I took several months back on a rainy evening.

Depth of Field 101

Remember the other day when I talked about making your photos better by giving them depth? Well, today we’re going to take that idea and run with it a even further.

Now that you know how to compose your photos and create a foreground, mid-ground, and background, I wanted to talk about how you can play with that concept a little more.

I want to show you what happens when you do only focus on the foreground or want to bring the entire photo into focus.

That’s right, we’re talking about Depth of Field…

Photos for… Monday?

 

Man, why does it have to be Monday already?

 

If you’re anything like me, and I’m sure you are, then the weekend can never last long enough. Since that’s the case I figured I’d be nice and share the rest of the photos from last weekend.

I can’t believe how nice the weather has been here these past two weekends. Too bad it won’t last much longer, though.

Anyway, enjoy the photos. Hopefully they’ll help break up the monotony of your day.

 

Gallery: DOWN BY THE RIVER PT. 2